I'm in a rut – HELP with Valentine's Day spoiling inspiration!

I’m sad to admit this, but I’m in a married rut! In our dating years, I would daydream for hours for ways to spoil DH for Valentine’s Day … and now that we’ve been married for a while, I’m lanking on both what I used to do for him and what I could do for him now! I’m even blanking when I try to think about what he likes!!!

@oracle: I turned to pinterest for my valentines day inspiration. I’ve been obsessed with all things baby this year so i wanted to do something to make DH feel special. We don’t really do gifts or anything big for v-day but each of us generally appreciates a small token that says “i thought of you.” I’ve been doing the 14 days of love and give him a small gift every day. It’s cost me $20 so far. I’ll end up giving him a card on friday and we’ll have a nice meal at home. i said i wanted to cook for him & he said he wanted to cook for me. So i think he’ll grill up something and i’ll make the side dish then we’ll make a fire, watch a movie and split a bottle of sparkling cider. I’ve always thought the poster boards with candy bars is cute like this one. It all depends on what makes your DH smile. My DH isn’t a fan of big gifts and usually doesn’t end up using them, but he’s really liked getting a small trinket each morning with a note. I told him i didn’t want anythig big but asked if starbucks has any cute coffee cups right now (I collect coffee cups) he laughed and said “then why’d i book a trip for us to go to monterey this weekend?” – i said “that’s not for valentines day that’s our baby moon since we didn’t get to go to hawaii.” I think its my baby moon and he thinks its my valentines day gift, i think we agreed that it can be both =)

We don’t normally celebrate Valentines, but this year DH has been obsessing about this table top game that he wants to try (and wants me to learn to play with him). So I told him, “No, we don’t have the space to play that here, maybe once we get into a bigger place this summer” and then bought it 😉 I gave it to him yesterday because he had a really bad day and I wanted to cheer him up. He is SO EXCITED!

He does usually go out and buy me a crap ton of clearance roses the day after, lol. Cuz they’re cheap so he can get a bunch of flowers and he likes to set them up all over the apartment.

Maybe you could take him away on a nice close-to-home trip, or have a romantic brunch, or spend the day in bed and only get up to use the bathroom and answer the door when you order carry out. A couples massage, maybe?

Or if he’s more of a practical dude like my husband, get him a tool that he has been wanting or a game that he has been wanting, or a movie, etc. Surely there have to be things that he has wanted but put off buying for whatever reason.

I ordered my FI a customized zippo lighter with a picture of us on it and our little saying we have on top. Also getting her a basket of random things she likes… car fresheners, boxers, candy, chocolate covered strawberries, etc. For lunch im taking her to her favorite restaurant!

We sometimes split up the Valentine “duties” and surprise each other. For example, he might be in charge of dinner and I might be in charge of dessert. One year I laid a blanket in front of the fireplace (with a fire going) and we had champagne and strawberries with mascarpone cream. It was very romantic and I’m sure you can imagine where that lead!

Our first Valentines Day I made homemade fortune cookies for him (surprsingly easy!). First I wrote a love letter and cut it into strips and folded a strip inside each cookie in place of a fortune. As he ate them he would get another piece of the love letter. He taped them all together and still has it.

This year we are spending our money to take a mini-babymoon trip to NYC, so we are doing homemade gifts instead. I am working on making him “Open when…” letters (found via pinterest). For example, “Open when you are feeling down”, “Open when you want me”, etc. I am also including a homemade coupon in each letter that corresponds with whatever the letter is…. things like, homemade dessert of his choice, backrub, etc.

When in doubt, experience trumps things! Think of something he would like to try or do and get him that experience as a gift! In the past I gave my husband a certificate for a couples cooking lesson at a local culinary place and dance lessons. I don’t think we’ll ever forget those particular gifts!

When we first started dating and I was super broke, i cut out 100 different sized hearts from construction paper and wrote 1 thing i loved about him on each one (biceps, sense of humor, love of sushi, great with children, etc.) I put it in a pretty keepsake box.It was something i saw on pinterest i think. He says it was the best gift he has ever received and still has it to this day.

Ok, I had a kind of cheesy idea a few years ago and DH loved it! He’s really into good beer, so I got 5 large bottles of fun beer to hide around the house and set up a scavenger hunt. I started off with a clue, and it led him to the first bottle that had another clue attached to it, and so on. The last didn’t have a bottle of beer, it had a lego kit. Yes, this is where the cheesy part came in! I found these 30 piece lego kits at the mall with batman characters (which he loves), so bought one for him and one for me. Then when he found it I grabbed mine out and we started a race to see who could finish first. Then I think I had some fancy cupcakes or something to go with the beer later on, but that’s the gist. Pretty simple, not too expensive, and was a pleaser!

Another thing I have given him in the past (I think for an anniversay or something) was a monthly book of dates. So for each month I planned a date, and put a book together with the date for each month. For the first month, we did the date the day I gave him the book. It took a lot of planning because I had to look for things to do months in advance to put them in the scrap book, but it was another pleaser. He is big into “us” time so he really appreciated all the thought that went into it. And it worked out really well for both of us because we had something fun to look foward to each month 🙂

@oracle: I had some boudoir photos taken and made into a book. When he opens it he will get to pick his favorite lingere I wore in those pictures and that is what I will wear for him! I also bought him a 12 month xbox live supscription. If this isn’t his best Valentine’s day EVER, I don’t know what is!

The best gift I’ve ever given to my SO was one of those deck of card books where you write a reason you love him on each card. A lot of blogs have them and say you need to print and hole punch and be really crafty with it, but honestly I just wrote on the cards themselves and put them back in the box. Took me maybe 40 minutes. he loved them